


Friends with the Monster

by AeeDee



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Blood, Dark, Drabble, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Ownership, Possessive Behavior, monster au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 20:06:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AeeDee/pseuds/AeeDee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story about Bruce Wayne's closest friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friends with the Monster

**Author's Note:**

> A rough concept for a new 'verse I plan to expand on later. Eventually.

They don’t know that he has fangs.

Claws that have drawn blood. Strong hands to bury the dead. A heavy heart and eyes that see the past and the future. Your mistakes and your sins. The will to not yield, the will to take lives for debts unpaid. 

The golden boy, heir to the fortune of Gotham.

You don’t know what you protect. 

The just and the wicked;

When he was young, his owner kept him in a cage.

When the sun fell behind the trees, and the shadows crawled across the floor. When the house fell into darkness he’d hide and sink in the silence of the evening and sometimes he’d drift into waking nightmares. Terrors that made him climb the walls. Fears that consumed him in that darkness; with those claws he carved red lines down his own body.

They used to let him out at night. Only for a few hours, just long enough to get a taste of blood. It kept the spirits at bay.

It’s less grotesque once you’re accustomed to it. His owner, at first he was horrified. Wiping the blood off the lips of a beautiful face and once you do that a few times, it starts to feel ordinary. Doesn’t matter how sweet his expression, how kind his voice. This was the payment. You can’t claim what you can’t control.

What you can’t take care of.

He would spend many hours in a cage that was perched high above, swaying in silence, humming a quiet song. Let the moonlight in through large windows, because when the light touched him he’d feel less afraid.

Nobody ever knew the language. No one knew the words. They resonated in his memories somewhere.

Such a good boy;

You don’t know who you defend.

He’s taken lives. Yes. More than once. He takes them when no one’s looking. In the darkness of the night and the shadows of the alleys, in the gutter and in the sewers beneath the ground. From Hell on up, don’t turn your back on him when he smiles. Don’t ignore that laugh.

It may be the only warning you get.

Nobody tells the truth. Everybody lies. That’s the honest to God promise.

Another cold night, and he arrives from the fireplace. Appears when the smoke starts to fill the room. His voice rising in the whispers and murmurs of the crackling flame and they speak together in dreams. Another night of restless sleep for his owner, his master and he vows to rid him of his demons, of what taunts him; of the criminals that elude his grasp and the poison he can’t absolve.

What good is a monster without a keeper.

What use is all of that power without a purpose.

It’s a cold night and it’s a rare evening when he chooses to stay in human form. It keeps his owner calm as he fights an onset of seasonal fever; the reassuring presence of someone that represents the best of him. Everything he desires and so much of what he lacks, and when he sits beside him they dwell in that comfortable silence. The peaceful exchange of mutual admiration and the awareness that he is valued, he is treasured, he is loved.

The power that man craves and the beauty that will never be his equal.

No, he is beyond him. Above. Something holy. 

When Bruce was young, he got lost in the caverns beneath his parents’ mansion. When they found him wandering lost hours later, he was covered in open gashes and dried blood on his clothes, dazed and delirious. He spoke words of nonsense, words of a language they couldn’t understand and they ruled it must’ve been the sulfur, the chemicals, the cold and a bout of illness that possessed his better senses.

He never said a word of what he found.


End file.
